World’s Wildest Snow and Ice Houses

St. Paul, Minnesota, sees its fair share of cold winters. To disprove its reputation as an uninhabitable tundra, the city started holding an annual winter carnival. Each year, the main feature is a gorgeous, sprawling ice palace. The 2004 palace, seen here, was so large that workers used 27,000 blocks of ice to construct it. The highest turret dwarfs the crowd below with a height of 75 feet.